If great British eccentric Cosmo Sheldrake is fast becoming one of our most precocious young producers, then The Fly can only enhance the buzz for it's his best creation thus far. It's idiosyncratic and with it intricate as his every other, though it's with that buoyed by a quite remarkable harmony instantly timeless as The Gosport Tragedy, or anything the Fairport Convention have yet contrived to compose as Sheldrake vicariously contemplates the precarious existence of a bluebottle, or more likely a tsetse given his penchant for the alluringly exotic. "Then I am happy fly/ If I live or if I [...]
Celebrate Richard Thompson's 64th with his all time favorite cover of his own work, plus four more cover classics.
"Last night I saw the new, new moon, with the old moon in her arm..." Impending doom or what? Take it away, Sandy. Fairport Convention- Sir Patrick Spens
For someone that has been recording albums for roughly 45 years and has contributed to over forty albums, Richard Thompson doesn't get the same instant name recognition as many of his contemporaries. The British singer-songwriter and guitarist got his start as a founding member of the highly underrated folk-rock act Fairport Convention in the late-1960s, playing on the band's first five records - including their seminal 1969 release Liege & Lief . After leaving the group in '71, Thompson went on to release a string of records with his wife Linda over the [...]
Coffeeeeeee... so very, very much coffee! Christ on a bike, I know I need to not be dozing off at my desk at the moment but I've had so much fucking coffee in the last couple of days I am starting to go fucking cross-eyed. Mostly this is down to trying to get my head together after the Cold Seeds 2/Wolf Bear Crystal Toads recording sessions over the weekend which, despite my lack of real direct involvement, still managed to knock the usually ruthlessly efficient Toad machine somewhat cockeyed for a few days. Anyhow, the disruption [...]
It took me a while, I confess, to properly appreciate Wounded Knee 's live show. Drew Wright has been playing in Edinburgh under that name for a good while now, but the first few times I saw him he performed a slightly less accessible set based around layers of looped vocals. It wasn't bad at all, but it wasn't easy either, so I have to confess my attention drifted a little, despite the recommendations from many of my friends. Last year I learned the error of my ways, finally, after a captivating album launch set for [...]
The original title, "Beige & Pink," was ditched, but the design concept stuck. Fairport Convention is to British folk what the Byrds were to American folk - they took the folk tradition of their native country and turned it into folk-rock, electrifying it in places and adding a rock beat to many of the songs, helping to bring it to a new, younger audience. Fairport Convention was inspired by the Byrds success, and if they did not in turn have similar commercial success, even in the U.K., they certainly did extremely well both artistically and [...]
Counting Crows return to the studio and come out with an all-cover album. 'Sometimes it's great to play someone else's music and try to make it your own,' says Adam Duritz. 'Sometimes it's great just because it's fun.'
Easy Bein' Green: The Songs of St. Patrick's Day It's time once again for obnoxious Americans and English to thoroughly annoy the Irish by tearing their culture down to crowds, food-colored [...]
There's a great feeling that happens when you sign a new label to work with: the promise of new adventure and an experience that is never repetitive. All labels are unique and mostly run by passionate and articulate individuals who share their musical passions and history in a way that ...
Counting Crows announce an album of covers to be released in April and release a free track. They're also looking for artists to submit their Counting Crows covers to be included on a free EP.
“You moved in slow degrees/A sudden memory/You're a Leonard Cohen song” - Better Than Ezra, "Under You" “But I was caught, like a fleeting thought / Stuck inside Leonard Cohen's mind” - Mercury Rev, "A Drop In Time" “Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld / So I can sigh eternally” - Nirvana, "Pennyroyal Tea" It's almost unbelievable now to think that we almost never heard Leonard Cohen , the singer. A well-regarded poet from the late [...]
It's that time of year to look back on the past 12 months and say "what the hell happened to the last 12 months?!". It's also that time of year where us music bloggers and self-proclaimed critics take the time to put together some Best Of lists for your reading pleasure. They don't really mean a whole lot and you can love 'em or leave 'em, but it seems like the right thing to do to sum up the year in preparation of the next. This year we're featuring personal lists from all of our fantastic writers. [...]
Hearing Essen 1970 is not far short of a miracle.
Wizz Jones has released a killer example of British Folk.
Filed under: The Hit List Look, we know that your Dad is pretty set in his ways when it comes to music. If it were up to him, he'd probably hole up with his collection of [...]
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![Lark in the Morning Medley - Fairport Convention [Audio]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/youtube/_N-neipG-7w_130.jpg)
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